He Gives You Your Vision

Aaron Crippen

He gives you your vision.
You give him your eyes.
He spreads his blanket across your jewels,
Then he falls on you.
What do you hear with his tongue in your ear?
Where is your vision now?

Listen . . . Colorless things in shapeless placesClamor. Where the lantern dies.What the stars mouth in the sky.Through the cracks. Back of the grain.I am the sound behind. Open the door.Open the door.

Aaron Crippen is a writer and translator of Chinese. He has won a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and the PEN Texas Literary Award for Poetry. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, VERSE, Mid-American Review, Nimrod and many other journals.